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Art in the Parks

Through collaborations with a diverse group of arts organizations and artists, Parks brings to the public both experimental and traditional art in many park locations. Please browse our list of current exhibits below, explore our archives of past exhibits or read more about the Art in the Parks Program.

2013

Manhattan

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

The Randall’s Island Park Alliance (formerly the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation), The Bronx Museum of the Arts, and Made Event are pleased to present FLOW, an annual summer environmental art exhibition on view along the shoreline at Randall’s Island Park. The project is aimed at fostering appreciation of the shoreline through artistic expression, while calling visitors to interact with and care for the Park’s island environment. FLOW features five site specific art projects each summer by participants in the Bronx Museum’s Artists in the Marketplace (AIM) program for emerging artists.

FLOW.11 and FLOW.12 were a great success, fostering a coalition of environmental, musical and artistic partners. Summer park visitors and concertgoers visited the artworks alongside the river, looking out across the city’s skyline. FLOW.13 – this year's third annual exhibition – is open to the public from June-November, and features five new site-specific installations, all reflecting and encouraging interaction with the Park’s history and environment. FLOW.13 includes Stephanie Dodes’ Transcendence is Absorption, Alejandro Guzman’s Loquacious, Eto Otitigbe’s Looping Back, Anne Percoco’s New Growth, and Jenifer Wightman’s View.

FLOW has been made possible through support from Made Event, proud producers of The Electric Zoo Festival, NYC’s largest electronic dance music festival, held annually at Randall’s Island Park. The FLOW exhibitions express the confluence of art, music and environment at Randall’s Island Park, in the midst of one of the world’s greatest cities.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Thirteen of Albert Paley’s monumental, abstract steel sculptures, created specifically for Paley on Park Avenue, will be featured on Park Avenue, at sites between 52nd Street and 67th Street. Impressive in size and scale, these steel works range in weight from 2.5 to 7.5 tons with dimensions as large as 21 feet high and 40 feet long.

Albert Paley stated, “There can be few exhibition platforms in the world to equal the distinction, visibility and excitement of Park Avenue. I look forward to this installation as an opportunity to reflect the dynamism of New York, with sculptures that rise as high as twenty feet and evoke the city’s movement through their gesture and balance. Although these new works are not technically site-specific, I have placed each one where it can bring into focus the ambiance of the location. A horizontal sculpture will be situated opposite the Seagram Building, for example, accentuating the open plaza areas of the site. A pair of tall, vertical sculptures, one expressing its energy with swirling loops and the other with bursting lines, will stand on either side of 57th Street, matching the scale and vibrancy of this widest expanse on Park Avenue.”

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Jaehyo Lee’s continues his signature use of crosscuts of Korean big-cone pine. For this work, the artist meticulously carved, shaped, and burned the circular wood slabs that are attached to a steel armature reminiscent of an 18-foot tall champagne flute. Lee is particularly interested in highlighting the “beauty in what is seen but not noticed.” LOTUS is a minimalistic approach to a monumental sculpture that exposes the nature of his materials, including the natural texture and character of the wood grain. Lee’s is the eighteenth public artwork to be exhibited in Union Square Park, seven of which including LOTUS at the southeast triangle.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

For the High Line, Gilbert & George will present Waking (1984), an image populated by the young that represent the primal life forces at their most formative and explosive stages. Originally 36 feet long, the image shows the artists occupying the center of a symmetrical and intensely colored multi-figure composition. Around them is an assembled cast of youngsters. The artists – their faces transformed into masks by overlaid color – evoke a kind of inner awakening, perhaps the passage from boyhood to manhood, which the hierarchy of the three figures seems to suggest.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Three sculptures by artist Alan Binstock are on view in Ft. Tryon Park—Wayfinder, located across from the New Leaf Café, and Third Portal and Trance Ender, found along the Stan Michels Promenade. Made of resin, shattered tempered glass and steel, all three pieces appear to be tools offering direction or pathways to discovery and (inner) navigation.

These sculptures are appropriately placed along the promenade that overlooks the Heather Garden, so the natural colors of the garden are reflected in Binstock’s luminous sculptures.

Alan Binstock also worked as a jeweler, carpenter, cabinetmaker, and taught yoga, verging close to a monastic life in an ashram community. Binstock currently works as an architect at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He finds the continued exposure to near and deep space images, as well as Eastern metaphysics, powerful influences on his work. Wayfinder borrows and interprets the forms of ancient armillaries and astrolabes, as well as Hubble imagery. Mantras and words of peace are inscribed in the outer ring and the center is composed of shattered tempered glass and dyed resin that catches the light that shines through the trees overhead. Trance Ender was inspired by the idea of energy centers (chakras) referenced in Eastern philosophies. With an interest in transmitting these ideas, Binstock mimicked the form of transmission towers. His new sculpture, Third Portal is also made of colorful shattered glass and caste resins that resemble the rotating cosmos.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:Individuals is composed of 15 bronze sculptures that are all unique, but similar in form. Made specifically for the park, “these individual figurative forms come together as a close community, yet it is always to be remembered that it is the individual that makes our world a place of justice and compassion,” says Andrew Rogers. It is a particularly apt theme that resonates with this location, the gateway for the United Nations. Rogers uses bronze for these twelve-foot individuals, a material weighted in the history of art, but used in a light, contemporary manner for this exhibition. The organic, ribbed outer surfaces act as counterpoints to the delicate, highly polished sculpture interiors. Each piece is balanced on a tightly curled base that unfurls as it extends upwards and outward in a continuously undulating spiral movement—similar to that of a tornado or a blooming flower.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Orly Genger’s monumental commission entitled Red, Yellow and Blue features the artist’s renowned usage of intricately hand-knotted nautical rope covered in paint, creating a work that transforms the park’s lush lawns into colorfully-lined chambers. Following its New York run, the installation will travel to the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside of Boston in October 2013, marking the first Mad. Sq. Art commission to tour.

Genger’s work artfully transcends the perceived limits of the materials she employs. This Mad. Sq. Art commission consists of 1.4 million feet of rope—the total length equating to nearly 20 times the length of Manhattan—covered in over 3,000 gallons of paint, and weighing over an astounding 100,000 pounds. Red, Yellow and Blue employs repurposed rope collected from hundreds of miles up and down the Eastern seaboard, bringing elements of the coastline to the urban setting of Madison Square Park. Together, three separate undulating structures of layered rope shaped on-site by the artist redefines the landscape of the park, creating interactive environments that invite visitors to explore both exposed and hidden spaces, encouraging them to navigate and experience Madison Square Park anew.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Roman Standard features a single bronze bird perched on top of a thirteen-foot pole that rises over the park. Often mistaken as a real bird, Tracey Emin describes the sculpture is a symbol of “hope, faith and spirituality” that serves as a point of contemplation. The sculpture serves as a reinterpretation of the militaristic symbols of traditional Roman Standards by demonstrating a seemingly insignificant creature’s strengths in its embodiment of height, air and light. “Most public sculptures are a symbol of power which I find oppressive and dark,” said Emin. “I wanted something that had a magic and an alchemy, something which would appear and disappear and not dominate.”

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

The Jackson Square Alliance presents Selections From The Modern Landscape (Jackson Square) by artist Kenneth Pietrobono. This commissioned project uses botanical signage to rename the existing plant life of historic Jackson Square Park to reflect the narratives and dynamics of its cultural environment.

With names such as Displacement, Pleasure and Class Barrier, Pietrobono works to acknowledge the complex forces at play in Jackson Square and its adjoining neighborhoods while creating space for consideration, understanding and thought on the public’s role in the modern landscape.

While many of the elements may prove challenging, by aligning them with the calm, neutral presence of the natural environment, Pietrobono encourages a tone of honesty, patience and empathy. In conjunction with the installation, the artist will be present at scheduled times to engage with the public through discussion and response. Detailed information may be found online.

Please note: This is a past exhibit that is no longer installed in the park.

Description:

Brooklyn-based artist Virginia Overton is known for her sculptures that incorporate raw materials and found objects, often using and re-using elements until they naturally decay. For High Line Art, Overton will transform an old pickup truck into a sculpture installed on the stacked parking next to the High Line at West 20th Street.